A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material which is subject to copyright protection. This patent document may show and/or describe matter which is or may become trade dress of the owner. The copyright and trade dress owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by any one of the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent files or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright and trade dress rights whatsoever.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to image forming apparatuses and, more particularly, to methods and apparatuses for managing error events that occur in relation to the output of images using such apparatuses.
2. Description of Related Art
One primary feature in an effective print system is the amount of time that it takes to output a print job. Generally, a user desires to output a print job as quickly as possible. Toward this end, most contemporary operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows, permit a user to print a document to any number of printers that communicate with a computer workstation. Multiple copies of a print job are sometimes divided up among multiple designated printers in order to take advantage of the increased output capacity provided by multiple printers as opposed to a single printer.
However, regardless of the number of available printers, the output time for a print job is delayed if one of the designated printers encounters an error during printing. In cases where multiple copies of a print job are divided among several printers, the user may be unaware that one of the printers stopped printing due to an error. The fact may not be discovered until the user counts all of the copies of the job and discovers that one or more copies have not been printed by one of the printers. The user must then re-send the print job to account for the missing or incomplete copies. This is both inefficient with respect to time and with respect to the use of printing resources, which are wasted if a printjob is interrupted.
The problem is exacerbated where multiple-printer systems are in use, as individual workstations may be at some distance from the printer or printers that output the paper copies of a document. Thus, an individual may not be present to monitor the status of the print job after it is submitted for printing. Even an individual who is stationed near such a device may not be aware of the status of his or her job. If there is a delay in the output of the print job, the user may simply attribute the delay to the print job being at the bottom of the print queue.
The previously described problems are solved by the image processing and output system disclosed herein. The system relates to a method and apparatus for managing and recovering errors that occur in relation to printing of documents in a computer network system. The system allows a user to designate various modes of printing a document and provides various levels of error management depending on the designated print mode. The system also identifies detected errors within a predetermined category and initiates an error recovery process that varies depending on the error category.
In accordance with one aspect of the invention, there is disclosed a method of managing error occurrences in an image processing system. The system comprises plural multifunction peripherals or hard output units for printing a document. Each hard output unit is communicatively coupled to a single control unit, the control unit being communicatively coupled to a computer workstation on a computer network. The control unit receives a print job from the computer workstation and then sends the print job to one or more hard output units. The control unit monitors the status of the print job with respect to each hard output unit to determine whether an error is present in any of the hard output units. If the control unit detects an error, it waits a predetermined time period to provide a user time to fix the error. If the user does not fix the error within the predetermined time period, the control unit then polls the status of the remaining hard output units to determine whether any other hard output units are error-free. The control unit then sends the print job to one or more of the error-free hard output units. If the print job includes multiple copies of a single document, the control unit desirably divides the copies between several hard output units in order to minimize the overall print time.
Still further objects and advantages attaching to the device and to its use and operation will be apparent to those skilled in the art from the following particular description.